Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  Adena whistles. Under her casual question is an undertone of bitterness. “Who knew the Federation treated anyone well enough to earn that kind of loyalty?”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t believe we’ll execute him today?” Jeran suggests. “That all this is a prank to try to keep him alive to extract more from him later.”

  Adena snorts. “Well. He’s about to learn that Strikers aren’t great with jokes.”

  The Firstblade shakes his head in disgust at the prisoner’s silence. “Why did you cross the warfront into our territory? Were you fleeing the Federation, or have you been sent here on a mission?”

  The prisoner doesn’t answer. Instead, his eyes swivel to the audience, and for a beat, his gaze locks on mine.

  I don’t flinch, but his look makes every muscle in me tense. There is a strange kind of desperation there, a pit of hopelessness that must have been hollowed into him long ago. Has life been so traumatic for him that he thinks of death as a release?

  My gaze wanders to the sharp cut of his clavicle, where part of his brand peeks out from under his prison suit. There is something familiar about it that tickles the edges of my mind, but vanishes the instant I try to concentrate on it.

  Aramin sighs and takes a step back. One of the guards approaches the prisoner from behind, lifts a bucket of icy water, and pours it over his head.

  He lets out a sharp gasp and falls to his knees. Before he can get to his feet, a second guard kicks him viciously in the stomach.

  The cheers around us grow deafening. Jeran doesn’t join in, but Adena stands up, craning her neck to see over the Strikers in the stands right in front of us, shouting herself hoarse. In Adena’s voice, I hear the raw anger that remains from her brother’s death. So neither Jeran nor I intervene as she calls for death in the arena.

  The Firstblade now strides over to where the prisoner sways limply against the arms holding him up. He asks him a question in a voice too low for anyone else to hear. The prisoner doesn’t even try to meet his gaze. He continues to stare listlessly out at the chanting arena.

  The guard swings a bladed whip down on the prisoner’s back with all the force he can muster. His eyes widen as he lets out a wrenching gasp. Still, he doesn’t try to avoid the whip’s strikes. Around us, the audience boos in disappointment at his lethargic reactions.

  Adena scowls and throws her hands up. “This isn’t worth the wait. Let’s leave early. We can make it back to the mess hall before everyone else.”

  Jeran gives her a disapproving glance. “Adena. Please be a little respectful.”

  “Of who? Him?” Adena shoots back.

  “Of the process. We may see a man die today.”

  I’ve witnessed plenty of executions. There have been dozens of other Federation prisoners who have died in this same spot. But somehow, when I watch this prisoner, I find myself looking away. If Corian were here, he’d say there is no satisfaction in punishing someone so unresponsive. They are never going to get him to talk at this rate, not if he has no interest in living.

  The snap of the whip echoes throughout the arena every time it hits true, and with each lash, he takes longer to get up. His hands clench and unclench. His boots shift against the ground as if in a fighter’s stance. But he doesn’t do anything else. He waits until they hit him again, and he goes down in another shower of blood and dust.

  Something isn’t right.

  The thought swells in me until I can’t ignore it. Something isn’t right about this execution—or this young man. There’s a difference in his gaze, his stance, the way he bears his punishment without a sound. Who was he in the Federation? Why the brand? No man can endure this kind of torture for this long. How can he bear it? Everything about this moment feels like a mistake, and the sharpness of this instinct rises in me like a tide.

  “We should be reaching the end now,” Jeran says quietly beside me. “I’m shocked he’s still alive.”

  “A shame,” Adena says through clenched teeth. She folds her arms across her chest in satisfaction at the sight. “Those serrated whips could be more efficient, you know, if they’d just place the blades closer together.”

  “Why did he desert?” Jeran asks.

  “Who cares?” Adena says. “They said he refused to cooperate when interrogated. Won’t say anything about where he came from or what he does for the Federation. Won’t even say his name.”

  The whip strikes the prisoner one more time. He collapses in the dirt to an arena full of cheers. It takes him long minutes to rise again. Jeran is right—we’re reaching the end. It won’t be long before the guards drag his body away and send in Striker apprentices to clear the blood-soaked dirt.

  I don’t know why I do it.

  Maybe it’s because I’m Basean, and I know what it’s like to be alone. Maybe it’s because of how I woke this morning, struggling to find the will to live. Maybe it’s because I’m about to be stripped of my Striker uniform, so none of it matters anyway.

  Or maybe it’s because this all reminds me too much of the day Corian had died, and the sight of blood staining the ground fills me with memories of him.

  Corian. Perhaps that is what feels so familiar about this. As the prisoner lies against the ground, he makes a small, sweeping motion repeatedly against the dirt, as if to comfort himself. It’s an uncanny reminder of the way Corian would wave his hand beside fallen Ghosts. May you find rest.

  If he were here, Corian would get up from his seat and walk down into the center of the arena. He would take advantage of his good standing with the Firstblade and speak for this prisoner, not caring about any punishment the Firstblade would give him. And later, he would sit beside me at the mess hall, his head propped casually against his hand, smiling cheekily at me as I scolded him for his reckless behavior.

  I picture Corian and rise from my seat. Jeran shoots me an alarmed look and signs for me to sit back down. Adena just blinks at me in confusion.

  “Talin,” she hisses at me, then switches to signing, “Talin, what are you doing? Sit down—the Firstblade’s staring at you.”

  Still, I don’t stop. My long coat drapes behind me as I take the steps down toward the center of the arena. Now other Strikers around me are murmuring. One of them shouts, “Down, little rat.” Laughter.

  I keep going. The Firstblade watches me as I make my way to the arena floor and head toward them. He shakes his head once at me, the only warning I’ll get. And yet, I still don’t back down.

  Before me, the prisoner lies in a fetal position on the ground, not attempting to protect himself from the guard’s endless blows.

  The stadium echoes with boos now as I walk up to the guard. He gives me a startled look—my steps are so silent that he hadn’t even noticed me approach him. I meet his gaze and see the bloodlust hot in his eyes.

  When he reaches back to whip the prisoner again, I step between them. I unsheathe one of my long swords. In one move, I catch his whip on my blade and yank it out of his grip. The whip goes flying to land a short distance away.

  The other guards all draw their weapons at me in unison. Roars ripple through the audience.

  I stand my ground as if in a dream. My heart beats shallow and rapid in my chest. What the hell am I doing? I had not come here today with the intention of defying the Firstblade in front of his entire Striker force. He could strip me of my uniform right here and have me removed from the patrols. Perhaps this is what’s making me so reckless. Just do it, do it and get it over with.

  One of the guards points a gun at me. “Get back up in the stands,” he snaps.

  Another comes with him. I eye them both carefully.

  When I don’t move, the first guard curls his lip at me. “Rats are always such poor listeners,” he snarls. The second guard hefts his sword and lunges at me.

  When you’ve trained your entire life to fight Ghosts, facing humans becomes the work of a moment. I sidestep, whirling, and slash out at them both with one swing of my sword.

  My blade catches both
of theirs so hard that they clatter to the arena floor instantly. The first guard tries to fire his gun at me, but I’m already darting toward him. My sword’s hilt knocks the gun from his hands as the bullet fires, hitting the ground and sending up a plume of dust.

  The stadium’s roars have turned excited again. They’re getting the show they came to see. The prisoner stays crumpled in the dirt, covered in welts—but for the first time, his expression changes. Through the blood on his face, he looks at me with vague surprise. A ray of life.

  “Talin.” The Firstblade approaches me. He draws his sword. Stillness ripples across the arena like a stone in water. “Step away.” In his voice churns an undercurrent of anger.

  I turn to face him. My head lowers in respect, and I kneel—but I don’t sheathe my sword.

  “That wasn’t a request, Striker.”

  I tap my fist to my chest, then lay my weapon beside me. “Firstblade,” I sign. “Don’t do this.”

  “Are you giving me an order?”

  “Please,” I answer. “He isn’t fighting back.” I look over at the prisoner. “Even though he can.”

  At that, Aramin raises an incredulous eyebrow. “It is only out of respect for your late Shield that I’m going to let you explain yourself.”

  My fingers move rapidly. “The way he stands. The brand on his chest. The shift of his posture and the movement of his arms. They are not the movements of an ordinary soldier.”

  The Firstblade’s eyes look up to search mine when I pause in my explanation.

  “I don’t know what it is about him,” I continue. “All I can tell you is that killing him will be a mistake.”

  Aramin’s gaze returns to the prisoner lying on the ground, covered in blood and grime. For a moment, I myself am not sure of what I saw in him. He certainly doesn’t look like much now.

  Then, through his tangle of hair, I see his eyes locked steadily on me.

  His glance sends a shiver rippling up my spine. I didn’t intervene expecting gratefulness from him—but I’m still surprised by the look of sheer rage that he directs at me. There is a glint about his eyes that seems inhuman, a powerful darkness in him that I can’t see. The Federation has done something to him, and even though I don’t know what it is, I feel as if I’d just witnessed a Ghost emerge from the shadows of the woods.

  At least his eyes now have the glint of life in them.

  “You’re telling me not to execute this soldier because of a feeling you have,” Aramin signs to me.

  His words are designed to make me feel like a fool. Maybe I am one. My resolve wavers under the prisoner’s furious stare. I can hear the laughter and unrest in the stands. The crowd shifts in their seats, mumbling.

  I take a deep breath and lift my chin. “Didn’t he flee the Federation?”

  “He’s still the enemy.”

  “He’s not their loyal soldier. He left them willingly. His movements are far too precise to belong to a common soldier. If we kill him now, we could lose a well of information that he might be willing to give us.”

  “We’ve already questioned him to exhaustion. It’s useless.”

  “Give him more time. He may know something invaluable.”

  “Step aside, Talin,” Aramin answers coldly.

  “Corian wouldn’t.”

  Aramin sighs at that. This is Corian’s spirit haunting me, giving me the stubbornness to take a stand here. I grit my teeth, not knowing how else to answer him. Not caring. “Haven’t you said before,” I sign, “we could use any help we can get? What if he can give us what we desperately need?”

  He grunts in irritation as I use his words against him. “Help?” he says with disgust. “We need a miracle.”

  “And yet things clearly aren’t desperate enough, are they?” I’m angry now, and my signs turn cutting. “After all, we still haven’t opened up Striker recruitment to the refugees in the Outer City.”

  “I’m not having this argument with you today.”

  “When, then? When the Federation’s banners fly over our nation?”

  The tension between us grows thicker. I’ve challenged him, dared him to remove me. “What do you want to do, Striker?” he finally asks. “Or are you so noble as to take his place?”

  I cast my eyes down at the ground. “With all due respect, sir. If you want to waste a prisoner like this during a losing war, then so be it. But if we execute him now, we might be digging our own graves.”

  It’s a reckless, stupid answer—here I am, facing my superior before an audience of our entire Striker force, banking on nothing but the fact that we were once equals, two soldiers fighting a losing war.

  He faces me in silence, and for a moment, I think he will raise his blade and cut me down.

  Then, finally, he takes a deep breath and nods once at the guards. “Leave him,” he says.

  Murmurs ripple through the audience. Disbelief. Even I stare up in surprise. The Firstblade does not take orders from a Basean rat.

  He casts one last, disgusted look at the bloodied form of the prisoner, then points his sword at me. “He lives,” he says, loud enough for the audience to hear.

  The surprised murmurs turn into a disgruntled chorus. People had come out today for the catharsis of an execution, and now I was the reason they would be robbed of it. Up in the stands, I can see Adena’s stormy expression.

  Aramin lowers his sword. The blade’s tip buries into the ground with a heavy thud. “But since you seem so fond of him, I assign him to you.”

  I look sharply at him. “Sir?”

  “You’re in charge of him now.” Aramin’s gaze pierces through me with an edge of vengeance. “Every Striker needs a Shield, don’t they? And it seems to me that you need a new one. Well, here’s your wish. You get to stay. You get your Shield. Your prisoner gets to live. Are we all satisfied now?”

  The insult of his words sinks into me. Heat rises on my cheeks. I had made the mistake of embarrassing him before the entire Striker force and the Maran public—so this is my punishment. Of course a prisoner of war couldn’t join the Striker forces. So instead of dismissing me from the Strikers, instead of taking my challenge, the Firstblade has instead turned me into a joke. I picture myself having to lead a chained prisoner around during training sessions. Forced to sit with him beside me in the mess hall. Would the Firstblade go as far as making me share living quarters with him too? The stares from the arena weigh against my shoulders. Snickers echo around me, their laughter cutting.

  Aramin reads my expression with a look of grim satisfaction. “I’ll hold you responsible for anything he does,” he says. “Look out for him. He’s your Shield now. Maybe you’ll be able to get the information that you so firmly believe he holds.”

  “And how long might that be, sir?” I ask him.

  His eyes stay cool and calm. “As long as any Striker stays with her Shield.”

  This is worse than a dismissal. It’s a death sentence.

  The laughter continues. The words that Corian’s father had spoken to me echo in my thoughts. You weren’t good enough. On the ground, the prisoner slowly pushes himself up to a seated position and meets my eyes with an accusing glare. I stare back, loathing myself for being sympathetic, hating him for forcing me to be kind.

  A rat and a prisoner of war. Perhaps we’re not so different after all.

  5

  Evening falls. I can’t get him out of my head.

  The sound of clashing blades in the arena still rings in my ears as I head out through the Inner City’s walls and into the streets of the Outer City, toward my mother’s home. Roads of mud cut through columns of haphazard shacks leaning this way and that. Everything is cobbled together out of scrap wood, threadbare cloths, and sheets of thin, rusted metal useless for anything else, leftovers from the worlds where we all came from. That no longer exist.

  I pass all of it in a daze. My mind lingers on the prisoner—my new Shield, I have to keep telling myself.

  The reminder sends a fresh wave of r
evulsion through me.

  I haven’t yet changed out of my Striker gear. I can hardly believe I still get to wear it. Basean refugees call out to me from their stalls, holding out reams of bright fabrics or gesturing to their burlap bags filled with red and gold and purple spices, hoping I have money to spend. Servants sent by their noble Maran masters point at the hanging trails of crimson peppers and black garlic, haggling for the lowest price. Though Marans won’t let us live inside the walls, they have certainly developed a taste for our food.

  I pause to buy a bag of spices, then continue until I reach another shanty neighborhood, my mother’s. Difficult as it is to be apart from her, here she is surrounded by a community of other Baseans. A small comfort that I hold dear. You can always tell the Basean streets apart because of the green they somehow manage to coax up from the dirt: tangles of squash vines snaking along the ground, mint and rosemary shrubs cutting through the scent of grease and perfumed rice and spiced fish. Fires burn low, dangerously close to doors, and in front of them crouch an assortment of people, cooking in iron kettles and on homemade metal grills laid over their fires.

  They are my people and I am theirs, but they still stare at me as I pass by, eyeing my Striker uniform with a mixture of fascination and dislike. A familiar murmur from them buzzes in my ears. There are such things as spies who patrol the Outer City. They’re sent by the Senate to listen for rumbles of unrest from these people who have been stripped of everything. Pushed to their limit, some lash out, inciting attacks against Maran guards and riots in the streets. I’ve seen the occasional Outer City resident dragged from their leaning shack, locked away after some spy or other has reported their plotting. I always feel confused afterward, a mix of pity and anger and grief.

  There are enough people in my mother’s neighborhood who think I’m one of these spies, dressed up in the fine uniform of a Striker and sent to watch over everyone’s affairs here. That I’m the eyes and ears of the elite, reporting who to punish. In this way, they see me the same way that the Marans do: undeserving of the Striker uniform. It keeps me suspended between the Inner City and the Outer—where I’m neither accepted nor entirely cast out by either side.